11 Best Meditation Apps Of 2023, According To Experts

If you’re having a hard time choosing between the two, think about what your goals are, as well as where you are in your meditation practice. Feeling calmer is a good thing, but the benefits of meditation go beyond state of mind. Depending on which answer you choose, you’ll then be prompted to answer a series of short questions so the app can customize your experience. From there, you’ll be asked to create a free account that will give you access to your customized program.

The Best Meditation & Breathing Apps To Reduce Anxiety

One of the most widely known meditation apps, Calm has a lot to offer adults and children hoping to de-stress. What’s more, in a 2019 study in 88 college students, a majority of the participants said Calm helped reduce their stress. The app offers simple silent meditations, a variety of teachers, and a function that allows you to search meditations by duration. The design is a little WordPress-y, but it’s user-friendly and offers a huge diversity of meditations, even in the free version.

• Buddhify makes it easy for users to select just the right meditation program for the situation, and pegs itself as the “mindfulness app for those who just don’t have time.”
• The study team noted that 2 of the 14 trials involved a Headspace employee, and 50% reported a conflict of interest involving the Headspace company providing free premium app access to participants.
• Pixel Art is an art-making app that offers the mental stimulation and relaxation of a coloring book in a more social setting.
• You have to pay to access the app’s library of hundreds of meditations.
• All you have to do is head to the Apple App Store (for IOS devices) or the Google Play Store (for Android devices).
• The review reported that 75% of the trials showed Headspace improved symptoms of depression, and 40% found it improved symptoms of stress and anxiety.

If you want to practice mindfulness too: Ten Percent Happier Meditation

When she’s not working, she’s usually practicing yoga or off the grid somewhere on her latest canoe camping adventure. Calm Harm provides activities, techniques, and resources designed to help teenagers end cycles of self-harm and find alternative forms of emotional release. By journaling within the app, teens can identify their patterns and triggers, which may help them avoid relapsing in the future. Healthy Minds Program – Developed by Dr. Richard Davidson at the University of Wisconsin–this app provides meditation training and podcast-style lessons.

weeks of Headspace reduces burnout.

This article is meant to provide you with some helpful information about meditation apps as a tool for practicing mindfulness. If you are struggling with your mental health, I encourage you to consider reaching out for additional support, professional or otherwise. Drift Inward represents a fundamentally different approach to meditation apps. Rather than offering a library of pre-recorded sessions, Drift Inward uses AI to generate personalized meditations in real-time based on what you’re experiencing.

Not to be confused with the abovementioned app called simply Mindfulness, this app looks a little bit corporate, but it’s steady and direct. Its goal is to get you into a true daily habit of meditation by creating very simple, very personalized plan with reminders. In every meditation session, you can opt to add background sounds, like rain or beach sounds.

Headspace improves sleep efficiency after just 7 days.

The app is based on the concept that happiness is a skill that can be taught. It was developed by famous news anchor, Dan Harris, who collaborated with the likes of Buddhist best workout app for men teacher, Joseph Goldstein. The meditation activities aim to help with anxiety and sleep and new content is added weekly.

And I could feel a twinge of cynicism every time a session wandered perilously close to the line between meditation and self-help. After a week or so, I started ignoring reminders to meditate and instead watched episodes of The Great British Bake Off on Netflix. New users can start with guided meditations for stress relief and sleep. More advanced practitioners will value the spiritual teachings and wisdom talks by Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. However, the Art of Living Journey App offers a more practical and detailed approach to mindfulness, requiring no special equipment.

Master Wellness Apps With an MA in Counseling

The Apple version of the Headspace app has a 4.8-star average in the Apple App Store, with 939,000 ratings. Users love the wide variety of tools, saying that the app makes it easy to commit to a steady practice. Meditation can be a simple path to feelings of calm, balance, and peace, among other benefits. Don’t forget to download our five positive psychology tools for free. If you are committed to maintaining mindfulness, your smartphone does not have to be an impediment to your practice.

Headspace pricing

Smiling Mind is an Australian non-profit that strives to help people achieve lifelong mental fitness and wellbeing. While the app and its content were created by mental health experts, including psychologists, researchers and content creators, it is all available completely for free. Wearable health tech like Fitbit and Apple Watch can also help you with your mindfulness practice. You can use these devices to combine mindfulness and meditation with biofeedback techniques to slow your heart rate and find calm, whenever and wherever you are. Although it is not a traditional meditation app, it uses similar techniques through harnessing the breath to improve focus, bring a sense of calm, and lead to better sleep and increased energy.

Finding the best mindfulness app for you

Digital technology has become an essential part of daily life. Learn about the positive and negative effects it might be having on your mental health. EMoods helps people with bipolar disorder and other mood disorders monitor and understand their mood patterns. Users can track daily emotional highs and lows, sleep patterns, medications, and other factors.

Explore 1,000+ guided meditations for feeling more relaxed — ad-free and always there.

The app offers educational resources about PTSD, tools for assessing and tracking symptoms, tools for handling daily stress, and direct links to support. Please note that if you think you have PTSD, it’s important to talk with a mental health professional as soon as possible. With tools designed for handling stress and boosting self-confidence, Happify aims to help you understand how your thoughts impact your life. The app offers quizzes, games, and activities based on positive psychology, mindfulness, and CBT. After sharing with the app what you’re most interested in working on, you get a curated collection of instructional meditation courses, guided meditations, and soundscapes. If you’re experiencing stress, anxiety or a related symptom, Headspace also offers quick exercises you can jump right into and quickly gain control over the situation.

Get some Headspace

It’s important to note, however, that these apps have not been created to treat mental health problems, and should not be used as a substitute for seeking professional help. There’s also an option to track your moods and review patterns in how you feel, and set reminders to breathe and take breaks for mindfulness throughout the day. If you feel skeptical about meditation, know you’re not alone. It’s pretty normal to wonder how sitting with your thoughts and doing some deep breathing can help you feel better. This app, which was created by researchers at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, has fewer meditations than other apps, but reviewers still praise the content.

Whatever you decide to download, be sure to read the terms of service and look for any language about how the app sells or shares your data. You’ll want to know beforehand if information about your nightly meditation practice ends up in another marketer’s hands. And don’t feel guilty when you ignore a session that looks tempting but doesn’t seem obviously connected to the intention you’ve set.

These devices allow us to use various apps to track our moods, practice mindfulness, get inspiration, and seek support for our mental health concerns. Many companies claim their apps can improve your mental well-being—but they have no clinical authority or research to back it up. The importance of mindfulness apps has grown rapidly due to rising stress levels, remote work culture, digital burnout, and increasing mental-health awareness. Research consistently links regular mindfulness practice with improved concentration, reduced anxiety, better sleep quality, and enhanced emotional resilience. For busy professionals, students, caregivers, and organizations alike, these apps provide a scalable and affordable way to support mental well-being.

It means being present and taking in and accepting what’s right in front of you. Mindfulness is rarely a replacement for prescription medications. Consult with a medical professional to learn how meditation can become a part of your overall treatment for handling the psychological or physical issues you’re dealing with. It didn’t make the final cut because … the app doesn’t include a better way to match its incredible library with your meditation goals. It didn’t make the final cut because … the app features a selection of colorful artwork, but there’s no video-based content.